Re: what is the 1394 connection ?

"Husky" <cbminfo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:aj3nh1dji68fhiudtlb7kou7a0mpdiagef@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 4 Sep 2005 18:43:40 -0500, "Vanguard" <vanguard.code@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Well that was totally confusing till I got to this. Actually the connection
says connected. Where all but my 2 modem connections were either connected or
disconnected. Which is where the confusion is. If there's a 1394 connected @
400 bps. I'd sure like to see some of that speed.

I disabled it and it now shows disabled.
something above about them having a 'The shop used the Firewire port because
they had a Firewire hub, switch, or broadband modem'

In the back of my machine it was just a wire. And when I asked could I get DSL
by plugging in that wire, they said I could if I had roadrunner. Roadrunner,
far as I know is an ISP. What would that have to do with plugging a wire into
my machine bypassing the modem ?


You won't get any of that 400Mbps bandwidth for anything unless you actually have a broadband device (cable or DSL modem) that also has a Firewire port so you can connect it to your Firewire port. Just having port gives you nothing unless you attach a device to it.

The shop meant that they thought RoadRunner provided cable or DSL modems that had Firewire ports. Okay, but the only way you will get that bandwidth is for your other local hosts on your own intranetwork (internal network) that are also connected using: (1) Firewire; or, (2) gigabit NICs (network interface cards).

Most computers have NICs. These are network interface cards, usually supporting Ethernet for a LAN connection to an intranetwork. It might not be a card but instead a controller chip on your motherboard. You have an RJ-45 port on the back of your computer for the NIC that connects it to your internal network (and everything on the LAN-side of your cable/DSL modem is your intranetwork). Most computers only come with 10/100Mb NICs; that is, they can support 10Mbps or 100Mbps and will negotiate to the higher speed if whatever they are connected to will permit that higher speed. So you probably will only get 100Mbps bandwidth between the hosts in your own intranetwork. There are 1000Mbps (gigabit) NICs but they aren't common yet.

Okay, so maybe you get to communicate at 100Mbps between your local hosts. Actually you won't get 100Mbps but why is too technical for you and you don't really care. You will NOT get that speed for your Internet connection. The cable or DSL provider might give you 1Mbps, 3Mbps, 4Mbps, or even 6Mbps bandwidth which is less than a tenth of your internal bandwidth with that 100Mbps NIC. USB 1.0 only gave you 11Mpbs and even that is faster than what your broadband ISP gives you for Internet bandwidth.

   Your Internet bandwidth = 1 to 6 Mbps
   USB 1.0 = 11 Mbps
   USB 2.0 = 480 Mbps
   Firewire = 400Mbps

You are still restricted by your ISP and they bandwidth they give you. However, 1Mbps is still far faster than for downloads than 56Kbps (which is actually regulated in the USA down to 53Kbps maximum by the FCC); uploads are much less at 384Kbps for broadband (but that is still faster than 56Kbps). So whether you use a 10/100/1000Mbps NIC, a USB 1.0/2.0 port, or Firewire, you will never realize anywhere near its intrinsic bandwidth for your Internet connection.

Just having a port that says it is enabled and will give you some bandwidth level (but which you won't actually achieve at its maximum) means nothing unless you actually have a network device attached to that port. That might help with providing high bandwidth between your own local hosts on your intranetwork but you are still throttled to somewhere under 10Mbps for the Internet connection through the cable/DSL modem. So it doesn't matter if you use a NIC, USB, or Firewire because you still only get the much lower bandwidth that your ISP gives you.

*IF* you go to broadband, you then get a choice of what interface to use to connect your computer to the cable/DSL modem: Ethernet NIC, USB, Firewire, or wireless. They are all far beyond what your ISP will permit for bandwidth to the Internet so it really doesn't matter which interface you use. However, since it is possible that you will use a USB keyboard, USB mouse, USB printer, USB scanner, and other USB devices then flooding the USB channel with all that traffic along with network traffic results in more collisions and reduced effective transfer rate. Use something other than USB, if possible, like a NIC. Firewire is okay, too, but only if the cable/DSL modem you get also has a Firewire port. However, if you install a NAT router between your computer(s) and the cable/DSL modem, I haven't seen any (doesn't mean there aren't any) that have a Firewire port, so plan on using an Ethernet NIC interface.

How you connect depends on what interfaces are provided on the hardware you get. There's nothing special about using Firewire to the cable/DSL modem than USB or a NIC since the bandwidth you'll get to the Internet is smaller than any of those interfaces.

The shop had a broadband connection through a device that had a Firewire port, so that's what they used rather than your slow 56K analog modem, especially since they probably didn't have any dial-up accounts to use and already had their broadband connection. They might've used USB if that's what their cable/DSL, hub, switch, or other network device had in it. They might've used RJ-45 CAT5 cable to use a NIC (but then you probably didn't have one and is why they had to resort to using USB or Firewire).

If RoadRunner provides service in your area, you could call their sales folks to ask which type of broadband Internet connectivity they provide (DSL or cable), what download and upload speeds they claim to provide (which are usually asynchronous so upload speed is much smaller), and what brand and model of DSL or cable modem they provide or suggest that you buy so you would know what interface it used (RJ-45 for Ethernet NIC, USB, Firewire, or a combination of them).

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